Rashid Johnson

Bruise Painting “Pure Love”

Viewing location: New York

2021
Oil on linen
122.6 x 91.4 x 5.1 cm / 48 1/4 x 36 x 2 in
126 x 95.9 x 6.4 cm / 49 5/8 x 37 3/4 x 2 1/2 in (framed)

Striking in its immediacy, Rashid Johnson’s powerful ‘Bruise Painting “Pure Love”’ (2021) features a grid of abstract figures, fomenting with a visceral energy that undermines an otherwise rectilinear arrangement. Wild and agitated, rows of faces are multiplied into anonymity, spread, splattered and scrawled across the surface in shades of blue. Using saturated blue oil stick on linen, Johnson utilises the direct and slippery texture of the traditional medium to radical ends, suggesting a new reality to which everyone must bear witness.

‘Bruise Painting “Pure Love”’ is an exemplary work from Johnson’s new series of ‘Bruise Paintings’ made following the onset of the global coronavirus pandemic and a period of extreme anxiety. The series builds upon the visual language of the artist’s ‘Anxious Men’ series, a group of single figures that Johnson debuted at the Drawing Center in New York in 2015. Rendered in black wax on a grid of white tiles, Johnson imagined the ‘Anxious Men’ as self-portraits. Yet, as conflicts both in the US and around the globe continued to flare, Johnson subsequently gathered these men into groups of spectators—witnesses to the tumult of our time. Reflecting on the emotional process that guided him throughout the series, the artist stated: ‘I was coming to the realization that my anxiety was not mine exclusively. When something happens to me, it happens to my family—to the human family... Thinking more responsibly about all of us—that happens with maturity.’ [1]

Whereas Johnson’s ‘Anxious Men’ series has been characterized by faces scratched into the pictorial surface in a kind of ‘drawing through erasure,’ his new ‘Bruise Paintings’ employ the direct application of intense color. Departing from his signature use of black wax and recent red drawings, Johnson’s frenetically painted, iconic blue faces reference the bruise as both a remnant of trauma as well as a sign of healing. In contemplating these abstract portraits, Johnson’s poignant ‘Bruise Painting “Pure Love”’ speaks to collective and individual identities in the midst of shifting social realities.

About the artist

Born in Chicago in 1977, Rashid Johnson is among an influential cadre of contemporary American artists whose work employs a wide range of media to explore themes of art history, individual and shared cultural identities, personal narratives, literature, philosophy, materiality, and critical history. After studying in the photography department of the Art Institute of Chicago, Johnson’s practice quickly expanded to embrace a wide range of media—including sculpture, painting, drawing, filmmaking, and installation—yielding a complex multidisciplinary practice that incorporates diverse materials rich with symbolism and personal history.

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[1] Rashid Johnson, quoted in Carol Kino, ‘Rashid Johnson: An Anxious Man,’ Cultured Magazine, Fall 2016, p. 175.